Movie Review: HairSara Jenkins
"Hair" is one of those movies about the enlightenment of a generation. Set during the Vietnam War, it showcases the conflict between the establishment, the government, and anti-establishment people - the hippies. The movie begins focusing on John Savage as Claude, a young man from Oklahoma visiting New York City before he enlists for Vietnam. While in the city, he meets a band of hippies who open his eyes to a new way of life, but he only stays for two days. The hippie leader, played by Treat Williams, asks him to stay, but Savage refuses. The rest of the movie chronicles the adventures of the group of hippies, joined by a high society-girl played by Beverly D'Angelo. They follow Savage to boot camp ostensibly to visit him, and their lives wind up being changed. The characters try to challenge the status quo in many ways. This movie is important because the people involved try to stand up to the establishment, but in the end are defeated. All they have left are themselves, fighting against the world. To counteract the broadcast of an admittedly downbeat social message, director Milos Forman utilizes song and dance. The songs are not great. If they are funny, it is often unintentional. Forman tends to use the songs as a kind of stream-of-consciousness commentary. It's easy to imagine the same lyric being used in a really bad avant-garde jazz cafe, complete with finger snapping at the end. The song-to-plot development ratio is poor. The film's pacing is kind of like a porn - too little plot development interrupted by song/sex that goes nowhere. Twyla Tharp, a woman who has choreographed for many major ballet and modern companies, provides some of her jazzily modern choreography for this film. There were some high (and that kind of high, too) points in this film, and the dancing was one of them (but not that kind of high, though). Another high point was the duo of songs, "Black Boys" and "White Boys." I almost fell off my chair laughing. Those two songs in themselves make the movie worth watching. You'll figure out why when you see it. They also make an encouraging blanket statement about the incidence of homosexuality in the military. Neat, punctual, and orderly... hmmm ... A third high point is that there's a really cute kid. I mean really, really cute. What movie isn't made better by a cute kid? It's my opinion that, once they introduced this kid, they could have just kept the camera on him and had the rest of the action off screen. But Forman would probably disagree with me there. It may sound petty to bring up a kid who really has nothing to do with the plot, but he's so cute, you just say 'aww' every time he's on camera. Finally, a great part of this movie is that it's about hippies. An entire movie about hippies is very Earlham, and one has to applaud EFS for its choice. Whatever your feelings on hippie-ness, it's a lot of fun to see an entire movie based on their counterculture. The point is, there's something in this movie for everyone. You may hate it, but at least you'll have a place to channel your hate. You may love it, and that's great. Oh yeah, they take their clothes off a lot of times. Just thought you might like to know.
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